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Penzeys

Sep9
Another lovely morning at the pond, with Wren, Biko, and Topaz snoofing around underfoot as I enjoyed a latte and pastry, both seasoned with Penzeys cinnamon, and pure vanilla extract.
Most of my lunches get a dash of Penzeys Sandwich Sprinkle somewhere, like this smoked gouda and avocado toast. I made the refrigerator pickles with their Pickling Spice, and the salad dressing with their Chip & Dip Seasoning.
An essential aprés-lunch nap…

For today’s lunch I decided to try the vogue ‘chopped salad’ trend. I like my salad pieces small, but I resist some of the food fashions, like ‘smashed’ this and ‘burst’ that, so I hadn’t tried this one yet. It looked so simple on Instagram. They laid some lettuce on a cutting board, piled on a few other things, and started chopping. There was mention of a recipe but who needs it? I piled cherry tomatoes, red onion, artichoke hearts, feta, olives, basil leaves, half an avocado, and some garbanzo beans on top of the lettuce, a dollop of mayo, a dribble from both the artichoke and the olive jars, and shook some Penzeys Za’atar on top, then started chopping.

It was messier than I’d expected, but I persevered, using a dough scraper to contain stray vegetation. Whilst chopping I thought often that it would have been easier just to chop some ingredients separately as usual, tear the lettuce, drop in whole olives, beans, pickles, and tomatoes, making a normal salad and tossing with dressing, and could all this sloppy effort really make a better salad?

I was pleasantly surprised. I really liked the even distribution of flavors and textures, more surface area thoroughly coated with the makeshift dressing, and the uniform pieces which enabled me to eat a smaller forkful packed with flavor. Still just a bowl and a cutting board to clean afterward. Thumb up on this trend, I’ll probably do it again. And of course the ingredient variety offers endless possibilities.

I’m grateful as always for Penzeys. If you don’t know Penzeys and you love to cook, or love to share your love through cooking, check them out. Just in the past two days of meals shared above, I used six different Penzeys seasonings. Every day I use their spices at least once, and I enjoy reading their staunchly patriotic emails. Yesterday’s brought a link to this marvelous video of VP Kamala Harris entering a Penzeys store in Pittsburgh. The customers didn’t know she was coming. It’s worth a minute forty-five of your time.

When the video went viral, it ticked off Fox & Friends, on which one host read aloud from Penzeys webpage About Republicans: “Going forward, we would still be glad to have you as customers, but we’re done pretending the Republican Party’s embrace of cruelty, racism, COVID lies, climate change denial, and threats to democracy are anything other than the risks they legitimately are.”

Penzeys’ manager Bill counted that as a win. He wrote the next day, “There you go. Friday starts like a normal day. Saturday the future President of the United States hugged our customers in our Pittsburgh store. Sunday the words I so wanted every Fox viewer to hear being read on Fox, by Fox straight to all their viewers. What a weekend.”

An essential aprés-dinner nap…

Good Food (or, What Did You Eat Today?)

Sep6
Little watch dingo in the sun…

I’m really looking forward to surgery. I’ve finally come to full acceptance that this is how things are, and now I intend to make the best of it. No more resistance, no more blaming myself for so many choices: food choices through the years, choices that led to so many falls through the years, the choice to practice extreme yoga which led to at least one hip injury. No more ‘if onlys.’ I’ve remembered that millions of people suffer from arthritis, inherited and/or acquired, and I am simply one of many; I’ve remembered that I suffered a debilitating tick-borne illness 35 years ago, one longterm consequence of which is frequently joint degeneration; I’ve remembered that I came by these bones from a father who was crippled by the age of 70 with degenerative spinal arthritis. I’m grateful the intervention to replace this joint has been perfected. It’s still a big deal, but as long as I don’t die, I’m confident I can handle whatever comes of it with equanimity.

Home and yarden preparations are coming along. I get a couple of good hours a day with energy and minimal pain, and feel highly motivated this past week to get things done. I’ve had a couple of potatoes sitting in the kitchen for weeks destined for gnocchi, and finally got that made yesterday. I’m grateful for the little pasta tool that made it so easy, and for the explicit directions that made the dough turn out so tender. Amy and I made the full recipe awhile ago, but this time I just used the dough part of it and made regular gnocchi instead of mushroom-stuffed. I’m grateful for Radio Swiss Jazz, which has become a staple while I’m cooking, and many other times as well.

I froze some of the gnocchi raw, to be boiled later; I’m stocking up the freezer for post-surgery. I boiled the rest of it and froze most of that, but saved enough for a light lunch. I fried them in olive oil and butter, and at the very end tossed in some basil. The basil lost most of its flavor when it crisped, so lesson learned: next time it goes on after plating. Still. So simple, so delicious.

While I’m recommending things, these cookies are THE BEST. I ordered them from Thrive Market, but found the company website with lots of other sweet and savory treats.
Desert four-o-clocks in the morning sun. I’m grateful for the resilience of plants! I think I’ve mentioned this before. So much that the grasshoppers did NOT demolish.

I used up the last of the peaches this morning, with these easy puff pastry peach turnovers. They’d have been delicious plain, but I added a little sweetened cream cheese inside with the spiced peaches for a Danish-like twist. Some of these will delight my next few mornings, but half of them went into the freezer so I can share a taste of the peach tree with special friends coming soon who have missed the harvest.

As I prepared lunch today (below) I reflected on how grateful I am for the wonderful food that I get to enjoy every day. Sometimes I feel self-conscious posting so much food. I’m still discerning the relationship between hedonic sensory pleasure and the concept of genuine happiness that is derived from living a meaningful life in alignment with my core values. The two are certainly not mutually exclusive, but I think I walk a fine line. As the queen of rationalization, I can’t be sure where my values around good food blur into pure gustatory delight. Either way, I want to move to the village in Italy where my friend Maya assures me that the main topic of conversation is food. The first thing everyone asks, she said, is “What did you eat today?” I’m grateful for a delightful and meaningful zoom with her this evening where she shared this gem.

Smoked gouda on toast with avocado and tomato.

The Rest of the Peaches

Aug30

The peaches are small but bursting with flavor. One bite and the juice drips down your arm. The sweet fruit falls away from the pit. They smell delicious. I didn’t weigh the two baskets I picked but they were full. This afternoon I shared some with a few neighbors and instead of getting rid of things I came home with one bag of tomatoes, one bag of cat treats, one large bag of lettuce and basil, two small tarragon plants and two small willow trees. How’d that happen? I’m grateful for great neighbors.

I froze a few, plan to give another few away, and will enjoy the rest of the peaches one way or another. One way is peeled and sliced atop vanilla ice cream, with just a splash of maple syrup…

One more garden success was the few beets I planted on New Year’s Day. It only took them eight months to mature! Their greens succumbed to grasshoppers early after I opened the heat tunnel, but then recovered when I put the screen tunnel over them. I was delighted to harvest a few decent beetroots, with another half dozen still growing now that the grasshopper plague is fading.

In pond gratitude, Wren continues to make new friends (a young garter snake) as I continue to excavate the proper outlet channel. The hard work is done. The net and muck shovel have arrived, and we’ll see how those work for clearing the pond bottom.

Wren enjoyed showing her little friend our pond project the other day while we were puppy sitting.
And Topaz enjoys supervising Wren’s work while I enjoy morning coffee.

In Cheese Sandwich gratitude, I continue to innovate. Above, fromage fort on toast, with avocado and smoked kippers. I’m thankful for my friend who suggested herring as an affordable alternative to salmon, and to my personal shopper for making the effort to find some in the big city. I enjoyed them in a salad also, and just ordered half a dozen tins online. Below, avocado toast with Brie and homemade bread&butter pickles. So simple, so delicious!

Simple Pleasures

Aug14

One day at the pond I saw three small frogs and two big frogs. My times in the pond have brought more peace and joy than I could have imagined, especially when I find myself eye to eye with a frog. Even though I’m not posting every day right now, I’m still grateful every day; even though it’s been a challenging summer, I’m still grateful every day. Simply experiencing myself as another living being in this little ecosystem fills me with gratitude.

Progress continues, slowly but surely.

And with progress comes motivation to spend relaxing time at the pond as well as work time in it. Once again I can sit with coffee in the morning at the little blue table, listen to the birds, smell living water, rest in open awareness with contentment. This morning I brought my planner and stopped in delight when I dropped it on the table. The most simple pleasures. Color. Sound. Scent. Senses.

I get an inordinate amount of delight from this small crystal ball which I bought years ago. It was sold as a sort of external lens for photography, but I never did much with it that way. I simply loved the simple perfection of it on a table, surrounded by ancestral cats. But the other evening I took it down to the pond to play, just for fun. No great shots resulted, but the simple pleasure of play sufficed.

I’m grateful for my first fresh tomato of summer–not from my garden, for sure, but brought from the market by a friend, along with Olathe Sweet sweet corn, a local summer essential.
Another day this week I savored a cream cheese and smoked salmon open-face sandwich with a sliced red onion from the garden. Grateful, as always, for the extravagance of food.

I’m grateful for the little dingo who finds the tortoise every evening. I like to know where he’s tucked in for the night even when we don’t need to bring him in, and it keeps Wren in training. In fact, she’s trained me: If we haven’t looked for him by dusk, she agitates until we do. The other night we went out between thunderstorms–she loves her job so much she braved the weather–and she found this hole under the fence. I panicked for a second calculating if Biko could have escaped, but he was tucked in under a sagebrush a foot inside the yard. It took a moment to dawn on me that something had tried to dig under in that spot precisely to get to him! What could it have been? I think it had just happened and Wren had scared it off. We filled the hole and have been vigilant about checking the fenceline morning and evening since then.

Biko has a number of usual spots he tucks in overnight, like the sagebrush where he was threatened (which he hasn’t used since that evening), but this is not one of them. Only once or twice in all his years has he tucked in under this spirea, but Wren found him tonight just the same.
Camouflage Cat along the driveway

Bagel Molds

Jul10

Bagel molds: another ‘right tool for the job.’ Bagels can be daunting to bake. I’ve tried once before, with these very molds, but used a recipe that skipped the boiling water bath step, and they were like bland round bread. For these bagels, my second attempt, I used an actual King Arthur bagel recipe, though I took a different shortcut and ended up with dough that was way too wet and also over-mixed. Still, not bad. Less daunting each time. Learning courage and perseverance in the kitchen.

They’re a little cakey in texture, not quite chewy enough, but … good enough. I’m grateful for letting go of perfectionism in the kitchen, and in the rest of my life, and allowing good enough to suffice. Spread with cream cheese, decorated with thinly sliced red onion, olive rounds, and some fresh rosemary leaves, I got almost the taste I was looking for after a conversation about bagels over the weekend sparked a craving.

The Colonel taught me to like bagels with cream cheese, lox, and capers, and I learned on my own to like the red onion as well. But I forgot to order lox from my personal shopper this week, so I made do with olives. And there’s no point in buying capers, I use a couple of tablespoons and then they sit in the fridge for too long and end up in the compost. The plan for the next batch of bagels includes lox, and a cream cheese and olive spread. And of course, red onions. As I was adding the pictures to this post, I noticed a new option on WordPress, to “Generate with AI” so I tried it out. I described the image I wanted: toasted bagel with cream cheese, lox, red onion, and capers.

This is the result of the AI bagel image request: kind of creepy, kind of hilarious.

Above, this morning’s breakfast on the patio, ‘a scone with raspberries on top and a cup of coffee.’ Below, the AI version of that: better than the bagel picture! Indulge me. I’m experimenting with technology, as if a high quality camera in a phone that fits in my pocket isn’t enough.

AI didn’t do too badly with ‘fried squash blossoms stuffed with Brie,’ which is what I enjoyed for an evening snack, but I’ll leave my own photo uncontested on this one. I did try one more, ‘dog licking my face,’ but the result was too creepy to share. I’m grateful for all the dainty little kisses Wren has given me today, for the variety of good food I’ve prepared, for having energy to clean up most of the kitchen afterward, for getting to teach a new cohort the first session of the mindfulness foundations course, for practicing awareness of afflictive thoughts and emotions during the day and doing my best to transform them into a more healthy attitude, for noticing and savoring moments of joy and connection, and above all for waking up alive with another summer day ahead of me.

Zoom Cooking: Cinco de Mayo

May5

Nothing happened outside today. Nothing. It was simply grey all day with a light breeze. But then this evening, right about the time I met Amy on Zoom, the wind kicked up. There was a brief spell where the sun came out and it blew about 30 mph for an hour, and that was the extent of the windstorm here. I wonder what it did elsewhere. Just in the past hour it’s started to rain.

Since we were cooking on Cinco de Mayo we decided to celebrate our Mexican friends; though we chose an unconventional enchilada, substituting a cauliflower-feta mixture for meat.

The sauce involved onion, garlic, oregano, and tomatoes, so I simplified by opening a jar of organic marinara and supplementing garlic and oregano. It also called for five dried Ancho chiles, but I only had Guajillo. Amy looked up heat comparison: 500-1000 SHU for Ancho, 2500-5000 for Guajillo (you can compare your chiles here). I used just one for equivalent heat, but it wasn’t enough so I added two more, which topped my pepper tolerance; next time, just two Guajillos.

Extra sour cream to cut the heat, and vanilla ice cream for dessert.

All it all it was a restful day and a fine evening. I’m grateful for exercising with my cousin over the phone, having a kitchen to clean in order to make another fun mess in it, for food in the house, for hot running water, for the first Broadtail Hummingbird of the season, for rain from the heavens, and for a reprieve from the planetary winds. I’m always grateful for Zoom Cooking with Amy: for our easy rapport and our fifty-two year friendship, for our shared history and things we talk about and things we don’t need to say, for someone who’s known and loved me since I was twelve.

Tonight we decided I need to survey my readers. When my brother and I were little, our mother tucked us in with a prayer. Most of you know how it begins: “Now I lay me down to sleep/I pray the Lord my soul to keep…” It goes on, “If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take.” My dear mother thought that was grim/scary/horrible, and so she changed the last two lines. I was grateful to speak with my brother this past week, and finally remembered to ask him if he remembered, and he laughed at the thought that he might. I was grateful to hear his laugh. Amy only said the first two lines as a child. I guess her mother thought the same as mine about the last two. We both remember that afterward we “god blessed” a list of names. And while we were talking about it, the third line came to me. I’m pretty sure mom said, “And in the morning when I wake…”

But I cannot yet recall the final line! So the survey is, what do you think it was? Please offer your suggestions in the comments. Sweet dreams.

Doing the Best I Can

Feb8

I’m grateful for my tracking skills, however limited they are. As the tiny dingo trotted up the driveway this morning (left) she crossed tracks with a larger canid who had clearly been down the driveway before snow fell, and back up the driveway in the same path after the snow. We didn’t try to follow the trail but walked alongside it for awhile. It could have been a rogue neighbor dog, but I prefer to think it was a coyote.

I’ve spent a couple of hours over the past few months trying to determine the most sustainable kind of canned crab meat to buy, and learned that both Bumble Bee and Chicken of the Sea purport to harvest and process crab sustainably. Seafood Watch from Monterrey Bay Aquarium is a great resource to determine the best seafood sources for ethicarian consumption, but not much help in determining which brands of canned crab meet their standards. It advises which countries or states within countries including the US are the most sustainable sources of crab meat, but the hard part is finding out where the crab canning brands source their crabs.

Our regional supermarket made the choice easy, with only their store brand available. Kroger, like the two brands mentioned above, dedicates a page to its sustainability pledge and progress, but doesn’t specify its seafood sources. So I made do.

The good news for me was that the canned crab made much more authentic crab cakes than the frozen krab, and the good news for the crabs is, even so, they weren’t so delicious that I’ll be making them a lot. I guess I’m still not that crazy about crab cakes, and have now satisfied my odd craving for awhile.

I made half the recipe since I only had twelve ounces of crab meat, so I enjoyed two for lunch and froze the other four for another time. I think next time I’m craving fried seafood I’ll just make salmon croquettes, or maybe fish n’ chips. Or a fried cod sandwich. Or maybe a fried catfish sandwich. So much seafood to choose from, even in the mountains of Colorado! As usual, a double-edged conundrum from the global market: how to eat ocean protein ethically while landlocked. It’s great that I can get seafood from anywhere, but all the petroleum that goes into getting it here! Some days I’d like to learn to fish; but, that comes with its own challenges to my tender sensibilities. Sigh.

I’m grateful for good food, and for finding my way through thorny ethical thickets to allow myself to enjoy many delectables in moderation, while doing the best I can to live lightly on the planet.

Weather Geeks

Dec21

I’m a weather geek, and I’m grateful for other weather geeks that populate the various weather stations: weather research stations around the globe, weather TV and radio stations, and the backyard home weather stations with citizen science movements like CoCoRaHS, the Community Collaborative Rain, Hail & Snow Network (“because every drop counts”). I keep my TV tuned to Fox Weather because it’s the best weather station available, and every time I turn on to stream something the weather pops up first. Sometimes it’s worth watching for awhile.

And so it happened this afternoon that when I turned on TV to watch my current lunchtime show, I came into the middle of this story. A Fox weather-lady in Philadelphia began knitting temperature blankets a few years ago. She started with a scarf but with a row a day, she pointed out, it soon became too long to be practical. So the next year she knitted a blanket, using just the basic garter stitch. Some of her colleagues hold up the past several years while she holds the current year and explains that it’s become a trend, and you can even buy a temperature blanket kit now. The man just off screen on the right is wearing the 365-row scarf. Unfortunately, they’re not standing in chronological order and I lost track of which year was which.

I was tickled rainbow to see this creative interpretation of temperature data, and wanted to see more, but a quick internet search didn’t give up the goods. Oh well. I think it’s a fine idea, and I might just buy some yarn to start one New Year’s Day. Obviously, I’ll need a lot of red.

Meanwhile, crab cakes, anyone? Growing up, I never liked them though everyone else in my family did. But the last few times I visited Auntie, who lived in crab country along the Chesapeake Bay, I tried crab cakes a couple of times when we ate out, and they were pretty good. I had some frozen fake crab that I bought for a recipe awhile ago, but then I lost track of that recipe. But that crab-flavored fish in the freezer started whispering a craving to me a couple of weeks ago, and then I found the perfect recipe to try, sweet potato crab cakes.

So last night I mashed up some baked sweet potato with breadcrumbs, fresh parsley, and everything else, and fried them a few at a time. They were pretty good, but they did not taste much like crab. For one thing, their main ingredient is fish. How do they get crab flavor, anyway? I don’t really want to know. For another thing, the fake crab fish was pretty tough and hard to break up into smaller chunks without getting out the food processor. But the sweet potato in there was genius, and the flavor was good with the spices I used, which of course varied a bit from the directions.

But give me a blob of tasty protein fried to a golden crisp to dip into a delicious sauce, and I’m happy. And grateful. I pirated the sauce outline from Chili Pepper Madness’s crab cake recipe. I’ll definitely make these again, but next time I’ll use canned crab as called for in the sweet potato recipe, since fresh isn’t a viable option in my landlocked homestead. This will entail some research to determine what the best canned crab is based first on environmental and ethical criteria, then flavor and quality reviews, and finally availability. We’ll know more later!

I ate three last night, froze four, and put two in the fridge for me and the one I burnt for Wren. As I drifted off to sleep last night, I imagined my lunch today: a crab cake broken into a spinach tortilla, wrapped up with cheese and avocado, and heated, with leftover sauce on the side. It was delicious! I have one more for tomorrow, and I’ll spread some leftover sweet potato in there too. I’m grateful for playing with my food.

Maple Syrup

Dec10

Yes, oatmeal again with a different twist. Apricot jam instead of blueberries, protein powder, flaxseed meal, and 100% pure dark amber maple syrup from Vermont. I’m grateful for everything about this bowl. The bowl itself: a simple factory-made Fiesta bowl, one of a set of five, with a long and loving story of its provenance and how the set grew from four to five, which hinges on a dear old friend in the antique business. There’s a whole story in this bowl that makes a simple vessel meaningful. And why I even wanted this kind of bowl is another story, about a bowl of granola with yogurt and strawberries, served to me in the backyard garden of a Maryland townhouse a decade ago. I’m grateful for the people who work at the factory who made the bowl, the materials they used that came from the earth; everyone involved in its transport from the factory to the antique mall in western Virginia where it came into my hands…

Bob’s Red Mill organic oats: who grew them, all the water and attention, the cultivated soil, the hands and hearts involved in growing and packaging these oats; the drivers, their vehicles, the roads or rails the oats rode on to get to my house, and my beloved personal shoppers who delivered them to me. It just goes on: the same train of events for the whey protein powder, the flaxseed meal, the splash of milk I forgot to mention til just now, hundreds of people involved and copious resources, just to make my oatmeal tasty. And your oatmeal, of course, or whatever else you eat to start your day.

And then the apricot jam. I’ve expressed enough gratitude about the jam and the tree in past posts I don’t need to go on about it. But the syrup? Have I truly expressed enough gratitude for maple syrup? I don’t think so.

I was raised on real maple syrup. The Colonel was a stickler for things like real butter v. margarine, real mashed potatoes v. instant, and real maple syrup v. flavored sugar syrup. He used to tell people I’d eat cardboard if it had maple syrup or honey on it. The biggest treat of Christmas was real maple-leaf candy in my stocking. And so I’m grateful to neighbor Mary for turning me onto Mount Mansfield in Vermont where I now buy the best real maple syrup regularly. I’m grateful for the family who’s been tending and tapping the trees for generations, for the time and care they give their trees and their products and their customers. I’m grateful for maple trees: for their sometimes towering trunks and their leaves that turn crimson in autumn, and for their nutritious sap that they cede generously to the hardy Yankees who harvest it year after year. I’m grateful for the technology it takes to get the sap to the sugar house, and the fuel it takes to boil the sap in gleaming vats, and for all the people who stir and pour and mold and package all the delicious maple goodness that comes sometimes to my home from the far corner of the country, and for all the people and vehicles and fuel that it takes to get it here, all the way to Taylor the Crawford UPS driver. I’m grateful I’ve learned through the years to use maple syrup for so much more than pancakes.

Breakfast for Dinner

Dec4

I’m trying to improve my dietary habits a little at a time, like oatmeal for breakfast, and more walnuts. But it’s hard, since I have an ever-growing stack of recipes I want to try, like these maple-pecan scones. So simple, so delicious! Mix a few dry ingredients in one bowl, a few wet ingredients in another bowl, toast and chop some pecans, grate some frozen butter. I made it even easier by using maple cream instead of mixing a glaze from maple syrup and icing sugar. Somehow, I’d never had maple cream before: it’s the most delicious thing I’ve ever tasted! It’s just pure maple syrup distilled into silken heaven.

I did have oatmeal for breakfast again, and a healthy lunch of salad and soup, and then a scone for dessert. After my feast, Wren did a few tricks just in case I might have a treat for her. And after a day of good and meaningful work, it was time to eat again. I’m grateful for three meals a day when I want that many, and for all the causes and conditions that lead to having clean, healthy, and nutritious food in my home.

For dinner I made The Bear omelette, and while my omelette cooking skills can improve this was a good start. There’s all this fancy technique, from whisking the eggs through a strainer into a bowl, and “constantly stir[ing] the eggs while gently jerking the pan back and forth.” I stirred a little too long to get a good fold but it still tasted great, and was definitely fluffier and lighter than the last omelette I made twenty years ago. The quirkiest part of this dish is the sour cream and onion potato chips crushed over the top. I’m grateful for breakfast for dinner.